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Improving Group Policy performance

by
Mitch Tulloch
[Published on 22 May 2012 / Last Updated on 22 May 2012]

A tip on improving Group Policy processing performance by limiting the number of GPOs you are using in your environment.

Active Directory places no limits on the number of GPOs you can create in a forest, but there is a limit (999) for the maximum number of GPOs that can be within scope for a targeted user or computer.If you have too many GPOs within a client’s scope however, the client can take an inordinate amount of time to process those GPOs resulting in perceived performance shortfall by the user.

To reduce the number of GPOs to a more manageable level in enterprise environment, consider using Group Policy Preferences (GPP) for managing printer assignment.That way you can manage multiple printers from within a single GPO.

Mitch Tulloch is a seven-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

See Also

The Author — Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch is a well-known expert on Windows Server administration and cloud computing technologies. He has published over a thousand articles on information technology topics and has written, contributed to or been series editor for over 50 books.

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